This Promise of Change: One Girl's Story in the Fight for School Equality

Before six-year-old Ruby Bridges bravely walked into a Louisiana elementary school and brought down segregation laws, before the Little Rock Nine desegregated Arkansas schools, there was the Clinton 12. In This Promise of Change: One Girl's Story in the Fight for School Equality, one of the Clinton 12, Jo Ann Allen Boyce, tells of her part in desegregating the Tennessee school system. Cowritten with Debbie Levy and published by Bloomsbury Children's Books in 2019, Boyce presents her story in verse, offering young readers an accessible and powerful first-person account of what it was like to be on the civil rights front lines during a pivotal moment in modern American history.

In a brief introduction, the authors discuss the contradictions of the law that allowed for school segregation in the first place. Even though the United States Constitution guaranteed all citizens "equal protection of the laws," many Southern states enforced this provision only when it suited the region's long history of racial prejudice. When it came to things like education, states passed individual laws to essentially override the Constitution, so they could continue educating whites and blacks separately. However, when the Supreme Court struck down such laws, ordering school integration, a few brave souls had to become the first to walk through the doors of their new schools. Many faced threats of violence and death just for trying to go to school. This Promise of Change is the story of one of these people, a Clinton, Tennessee, native who was one of twelve local African Americans chosen to be the first students of color at a historically all-white school.

Through lyrical verse, Boyce and Levy paint a vivid portrait of Clinton and its people. In a less enlightened time, Clinton is a town divided into two camps, one consisting of the white population, the other consisting of the black population. Boyce proudly calls Clinton her hometown, seeing the community for both its beauty and its ugliness. She grows up "up on the Hill," where most of the town's black population lives. While she recognizes that she has neighbors "nice and not-so-nice," she feels safe and comfortable in her neighborhood, where there are fish fries and bottles of red soda pop and lots of church.



Then, she discusses "their town," the other Clinton where the white folks live. It's "friendly and fine," so long as black people "stay in our places." Boyce tells of her mother, who works for a white family in the white part of Clinton. Boyce envies the family their in-home library because she loves to read. She goes on to say that everyone she knows has someone who works for one of the town's white families, and all the black workers wonder, "What it would be like to be more free."

As Boyce grows up, she attends the all-black school clear over in Knoxville. However, once the Supreme Court orders school integration, she is called to be among the first students to attend the all-white Clinton High School. Though she acknowledges a certain level of stability between the whites and blacks in her town, Boyce harbors no illusions about what high school will now involve. Because she is black, she cannot attend any school dances, or join any school sports, or be a part of any of "the fun stuff"—that's whites-only.

At the same time, she is hopeful. "I am an optimist," Boyce declares, "I like to think/ people will do the right thing."



They don't. The white people don't, anyway. They form an angry mob outside the school. They hurl racial epithets at Boyce and her eleven fellow students. Meanwhile, school officials do little to intervene, their principal viewing desegregation only as a legal imperative, not a moral one. The Ku Klux Klan arrives to stir up even more trouble. Clinton eventually erupts into full-fledged riots, and the National Guard stations itself in town to attempt to maintain some semblance of peace and order.

With publicity around the Clinton 12 reaching a fever pitch, the group appoints Boyce their spokesperson. Though she is well-suited to the job—practical, no-nonsense, and popular with both her black and white classmates—Boyce also must sacrifice a bit of her innocence and optimism. She is a teenager forced to speak for the anguish of her entire community, calmly calling for unity over the din of racial discord.

Though the integration experience shakes Boyce's faith and hope, it does not shatter them. Eventually, the school complies with the law, and racial tensions abate. But none of it would have been possible without the Clinton 12—and Boyce's steadying, grounding, and logical voice that was at their heart.



This Promise of Change includes a number of supplemental materials, including biographies of each member of the Clinton 12 and photographs. There is also a timeline of school segregation and civil rights landmarks, as well as insights into how Boyce and Levy came together to write the book and create its unique, nonfiction-verse style.